Welcome to Reality
by It'sLiterallyFiction
Summary: The Doctor gets temporarily stuck in London after the TARDIS crashes and has to be repaired. The Doctor stays with Melanie Ford, a 21 year old university student who joins the Doctor on his adventures.
1. The Crash

I was asleep when I heard the crash. I was having one of those dreams where you're almost certain it's real life, but then you realize the fuzziness around the edges and the lack of details. I was in a field with a group of friends. We were laughing. Then I woke up with a jolt. My eyes snapped open. I heard something. _What was it?_ Instinctively I lay still, unmoving. A whirring noise. It didn't sound like anything I'd heard before. What is that? I slide out of bed and crossed my room in two long strides. Flicking the light on, I looked around. Nothing here. I stuck my head out into the dark living room. The sound was quieter, so I went back into my room and over to the bathroom. I clicked the light and threw back the shower curtain. Nothing. Maybe it's outside. I turned the light off and tiptoed over to the window. I opened the curtains a crack and peered out. The front garden was dark and the sound was louder. A street lamp glowed yellow further down the small street, eluminating a patch of road. The front garden had a line of trees, shielding the small house from the street, and amongst these trees I could see a collection of strange lights floating in the air. _What?_ The sound seemed to be coming from the lights. I grabbed my torch and phone and ran out into the living room, picking up my black coat and boots and pulling them on hastily. Stuffing my phone in my jacket pocket, I pulled open the sliding doors and stepped outside. The cold hit me and made me take a sharp breath in. The winter wind blew against me, making my hair whip around. I brushed a strand off my face with the back of my hand. I walked around the side of the house until I had my back against the wall, next to my bedroom window. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering and switched on my torch. I half expected to see Slenderman standing in front of me like "Hello child" but he wasn't. Maybe I should mention that I'm not usually scared of things, but standing in the dark with the almost certain chance of the girl from the Ring nearby made me extremely frightened. And what did I have to defend myself with? A small torch and an iPhone. My Temple Run knowledge can't save me now. So I counted to three and literally sprinted across the lawn until I was in the shelter of a tree. Now I was closer I could see the outline of... No. This cannot be happening. A blue police box in my front garden. Buzzing with the strange whirring sound. This isn't real. This is a dream. But it's not. It's not fuzzy around the edges like dreams are. _But how?_ How is there a police box in my garden? Do they even _have_ police boxes anymore? I stepped towards it. I reached out. I touched it. It's really there, there's really a police box in my front garden. I ran my hand down the side, the blue paint rough against my fingers. I slowly walked around the box until I came to what I thought was the front. It had handles and a sign. I grasped a handle and pulled. Nothing, it's locked I suppose. Wait, do police boxes even lock? I suppose they do because this one has a keyhole. I pressed a finger to the keyhole. Then I stood up on my toes and tried to see into the box through the windows, but I couldn't see anything. I was just trying the handle again when the doors flew open and a burst of warm air flew out. I hastily took a large step back, stumbling on a tree root. As my eyes adjusted to the light coming from the box, a man stepped out. He was tall with dark floppy hair and was wearing dark pants and shoes with a lighter shirt, red suspenders and a red bow tie. Oh my gosh. Random guy in a box. In my front garden. "Hello!" the man said, taking a step towards me.

"Hi" I squeaked.

"So" he said, circling his box once, before coming back to stand in front of me. "Where are we? I mean, what planet? It's cold." He strode back into his blue box and returned, pulling on a tweed jacket and holding something that looked very much like a large pen. He came very close to me and I instinctively lent back. How? How is there a man and a police box in my garden? Is this real life? The man clicked his pen thing and held down a button, shining a green light into my eyes. I blinked. The pen made strange noises. He looked at the pen, then stuck it into his jacket pocket. "Right! Human! So I guess this would be Earth! And where on Earth, then. Obviously somewhere cold. But where _exactly_?" The man spun around and put a hand on a nearby tree. Then he smelled the tree. _What is he doing?_ He dropped to the ground and pushed against it. Hopping up, he said "England. Correct? Yes. I think so. What part then?"

"London." I whispered. I think I was in a sort of shock.

"London!" He cried, putting away the pen in his jacket and spinning around again. "Lovely! What year?"

_What year?_ Okay, this guy is crazy. Or has been living under a rock. "2013?"

"Oh! Very nice! So." He jumped back to me and looked down into my face. "Who are you?"

I took a breath. This man didn't seem dangerous. He seemed crazy. But in a good way. I liked him and I didn't know why.

"I'm Melanie."

"Well, Melanie, I'm very, _very_ glad to meet you." He was still looking at me, like he was trying to read my mind. Suddenly he spun around and pulled out his pen thing, pointing it at the ground and the trees. He was strange. Random man in a bow tie appears in a blue police box with a pen that lights up and doesn't know what planet or what year it is. He seemed mysterious, like he knew things you wouldn't dream of knowing, like he's seen things no one's ever seen.

"Who _are_ you?" I asked slowly.

He spun back around and looked at me.

"I'm the Doctor."


	2. The TARDIS

"If you're a doctor, why does your box say police?" I asked the Doctor.

His expression turned serious and he looked at me with sad eyes. "A friend of mine asked that exact question once," he told me.

"What did you answer her?" I asked.

"I never answered her. I just took an apple from her." He smiled slightly.

"Oh, um okay..."

"So, Melanie. Is that your house?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah, basically. I'm minding it for some friends. They're away on holiday." I answered, looking at the small house.

He nodded. "So what are you going to do when they come back?"

"Well, I'm in uni, so probably something like finished my course and get an apartment or something?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "You don't sound very sure."

"I'm not very sure."

The Doctor nodded.

"So why is your box in my garden?" I asked, changing the subject.

"I don't know. She just took me here." He said, looking at the box.

"What do you mean, _took you_?"

The Doctor smiled and nudged the box's door open with his foot. "Take a look." He invited.

I looked at him suspiciously, then slowly stepped inside. My eyes widened. _It's bigger on the inside._ "Wow" I breathed. "That's, uh, impressive..." I said, trying to come up with a good word to describe what I was seeing. Truth? No such word exists.

"Yeah I know." The Doctor said, striding over to the controls and looking at a screen. He tapped it with his pen.

"What's that?" I said, pointing at the pen in his hand.

"This? It's a sonic screwdriver. Opens doors, not wood, though. Does various other things."

I nodded. "Um, okay, well, outside you said that your box-"

"TARDIS."

"Excuse me?"

"She's called the TARDIS. Time and relative dimension in space."

"Oh, uh, okay, outside you said that the _TARDIS _took you here. What did you mean by that?" I asked.

"What to find out?"

I paused. Did I want to? Did I want this box to take me somewhere? Though I doubted it could. "Okay."

He grinned and his eyes glinted. He started spinning around the control panel, pulling levers and flipping switches. The noise I had heard when I had woken up, started again. "WHAT'S THAT NOISE?!" I yelled over it.

"I THINK I, UH, LEFT THE BRAKES ON!" he yelled back, not making eye contact.

A couple seconds later the noise stopped and he ran over, grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the door. He opened it with a flourish and I cautiously stepped out.

"Oh wow, so impressive, "I said, sarcastically this time. We hadn't moved. We were exactly where we were a minute before.

The Doctor swung out of the box and strode across the garden and up to the window. He peered inside, then turned and said "Really? Not impressive? Come take a look."

I rolled my eyes. Come take a look through my bedroom window? I walked over. There's nothing in my bedroom, did he really think that- that

"That's - that's not possible..." I stammered, because as I looked through my window, I could see someone sleeping in my bed. And that someone was _me._


End file.
